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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => "Do I get $a[PMS]?",
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2017/09/13.jpg" alt="Rose hips" class="framed-centred-image" width="800" height="480"/>
<section id="general">
	<h2>General news</h2>
	<p>
		I really want to have a home Internet connection again.
		I feel like my setup is half gimped without one (and not the fun type of &quot;$a[GIMP]ed&quot;, either).
		I will continue without one because it saves money, but once I&apos;m out of debt, I think I&apos;ll finally subscribe to service.
		Then I&apos;ll set up a Minetest server on it.
		And of course, I&apos;ll set up a $a[Tor] exit node on it.
		Then again, a $a[VPS] would be cheaper than a home Internet connection, and I&apos;d have a lot more options in providers.
		Maybe I should just get a $a[VPS].
	</p>
	<p>
		Yesterday and today, I&apos;ve been back to thinking sex is disgusting again.
		This isn&apos;t the first time it&apos;s happened, and just like last time, I started questioning my gayness.
		I think I have a theory for what&apos;s going on though: my hormonal cycle&apos;s doing this to me.
		The male hormonal cycle&apos;s supposed to occur on a daily basis, while the female cycle&apos;s supposed to take a month to complete.
		But my brain&apos;s not fully either.
		I don&apos;t have ovaries, which are where a lot of the female hormones come from, but there&apos;re also hormones released by the brain, and I do have one of those.
		I think I might be experiencing some sort of half-$a[PMS].
		So that&apos;s lovely.
		I need to look more into this theory when I have time; if I&apos;m right, I shouldn&apos;t be the only gay male that&apos;s every experienced this, so I should be able to find evidence to back my theory.
	</p>
	<p>
		I went over to help my mother clean for a couple of hours.
		While I was there, my mother asked for a key to my place so she can store stuff here.
		I no longer have spare rooms for that; I&apos;ve started using the rooms I offered her before she freaked out and decided not to store stuff here.
		Reluctantly, I&apos;ll give here a key though for a couple reasons.
		First, she showed some actual humility and asked for the key.
		In doing so, she at the very least <strong>*pretended*</strong> not to think she&apos;s just entitled to getting one without asking for it.
		I&apos;m hoping she sincerely understands she can&apos;t just expect things to be handed to her without her at least putting in the minimal effort needed to ask for them.
		And second, she seems to be trying to act reasonable.
		At least today.
		Hopefully this continues, though I don&apos;t honestly believe it&apos;ll last long.
		She seems to be bipolar, though it might be her own hormonal cycle and not an actual mental defect.
		I&apos;ll work on clearing as much space as I can for her, though she won&apos;t have as much space as had she not freaked out in the first place.
		I have stuff now, and I can&apos;t keep it from taking up space.
	</p>
	<p>
		My mother mentioned that she feels weird being a minister.
		I tried to think of why that&apos;d be, but I drew a blank.
		Could it be that it&apos;s odd to be both a schoolteacher and a minister?
		No.
		It turns out it&apos;s because of her Mormon upbringing and her sex.
		The Mormons don&apos;t allow women to hold any sort of religious power, and of course, marriage is often bound not only by law, but also by a faith of your own choosing.
		Without thinking, I replied that I&apos;d not even considered my mother&apos;s sex or gender as far as being a minister was concerned.
		She asked me what the difference between sex and gender is.
		Oops.
		I wasn&apos;t supposed to let that one slip.
		I explained that sex is what&apos;s between your legs, while gender is what&apos;s in your head.
		While these usually match, they don&apos;t always.
		I asked if she knew about transgendered and agendered people.
		She knew about transgendered people, but not agendered people, so I explained that they are those of us that don&apos;t have ties to either masculinity or femininity.
		I&apos;m not into make-up like a girl, but I&apos;m not into sports like a boy.
		She said I never really have been into sports, and that back when she signed me up for football (her choosing, not mine), I picked daisies on the field instead of actually playing the game.
		I don&apos;t remember that, but flowers are certainly a lot more interesting than football.
		It doesn&apos;t surprise me that I&apos;d do that.
		She seemed to get the premise of agenderism though, and saw that I fit the mould.
		So ... I guess I&apos;ve had the sex and gender talk with my mother now.
		I honestly never thought I&apos;d tell her about my agenderism.
		Now that I have, it might escalate at some point, with me asserting my pronoun of choice with her.
	</p>
	<p>
		Then again, maybe it won&apos;t.
		I confirmed today that she still calls me <span class="redacted">[REDACTED]</span>, despite the fact she knows I hate that name.
	</p>
	<p>
		I feared the reason I hadn&apos;t gotten the information about my primary heath care provider yet was that it&apos;d been sent to the wrong address.
		And so it had.
		I picked that letter up today while I was at my mother&apos;s place.
		She also gave me a suggestion for my Halloween costume: use a graduation gown.
		Finding a graduation gown in male sizes will be so much easier than finding a dress in them.
		If I can find a place to get the gown, this should work quite well.
	</p>
	<p>
		My friend lent me a book today: the full collection of Grimm&apos;s Fairy Tales.
		I&apos;ll be putting down the Oz series for now once I finish the book I&apos;m currently on, and read these darker tales.
		I&apos;m interested to see just how dark the original versions of these stories are.
	</p>
	<p>
		My <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a> still sings the tune of freedom and transparency.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="university">
	<h2>University life</h2>
	<p>
		I finished up my discussion assignments:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			As we lose privacy, I feel less safe.
			When we give up our freedom and privacy in the name of security, we&apos;ll lose not only our freedom and privacy, but our security as well.
			We&apos;ll lose our right to be ourselves, and that scares me greatly.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			I agree.
			When you use the email account provided by the company you work for, you can expect them to monitor your usage of it.
			It feels wrong to spy on your employees like that, but then again, they&apos;re acting as the face of your company.
			You need to make sure they&apos;re acting as you need them too.
			However, when other companies spy on us, such as how Google and Facebook do, there&apos;s no acceptable excuse.
			They steal our privacy so they can sell it away to their advertisers.
			We need to guard our privacy better by staying away from the products offered by these companies and by not willingly handing over the personal details of our lives.
			These companies have further proved to us that they can&apos;t be trusted with our information because they willingly hand it over to the $a[NSA] without a warrant or other court order.
			We also need to do our best to keep evil government organisations such as the $a[NSA] from monitoring our every move, so when companies prove we can&apos;t trust them, we need to cut ties with those companies.
		</p>
		<p>
			You mention cookie deletion as a way to protect privacy.
			That&apos;s such an easy thing to do.
			With the right setup, you don&apos;t even need to remember to do it!
			Many Web browsers can be configured to delete all the cookies and/or history as soon as you close the browser, even without private browsing mode, though private browsing mode might still be advantageous.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			It&apos;s amazing how quickly data can travel around the world these days.
			I used to play games with and have real-time conversations with people across the world from me!
			(I miss those days, but I haven&apos;t had time for games in quite a while.)
		</p>
		<p>
			Privacy at work is something many people want, but isn&apos;t something I think we&apos;ll ever have.
			If you aren&apos;t fine with the company you work for monitoring you, they&apos;ll find another employee and terminate you.
			You&apos;re acting as the face of their company, and they want to be sure you aren&apos;t tarnishing their name.
			I agree though that companies have an ethical obligation to inform their employees that they&apos;re being monitored.
			I think a bigger problem in privacy is when companies you <strong>*don&apos;t*</strong> work for try to mine your data.
			These are the companies we have much more power to avoid and replace in our lives.
			By avoiding these harmful companies, we can not only protect our privacy better, but also force them to change their ways (but only if we all avoid these companies together).
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			You make a great point about data-mining companies operating across thousands of websites to get a detailed imprint of who you are.
			It&apos;d be nice if we had a tool for preventing that.
			The $a[EFF] maintains a tool called Privacy Badger, which is very effective against this sort of attack on our privacy, but it has a fatal flaw: If JavaScript is disabled when the browser is started, Privacy Badger fails to function.
			Toggling JavaScript doesn&apos;t seem to affect anything; it&apos;s only right when the browser starts that it matters.
			However, there are some problems in the University of <span class="redacted">[REDACTED]</span> website that cause me great hassle.
			The only way I&apos;ve found to get the school&apos;s website to quit locking up on me (which it does quite frequently) is to disable JavaScript.
			Because of this website alone, I keep JavaScript disabled most of the time, and I don&apos;t remember to turn it back on right before I close the browser.
			(And why should I have to turn it back on at all?)
			If you&apos;re not like me though, and you keep JavaScript enabled most of the time, using Privacy Badger can be a good step in reclaiming your privacy.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Now you&apos;ve got me curious.
			What industries have yet to adopt virtualisation?
			As all the major operating systems use it, including Linux (popular for servers) and Windows (popular for desktops), it seems like the only space left for non-virtualised systems would be those running a custom operating system.
			It&apos;d probably be a pretty bare-bones system too, as otherwise, you might as well just customise an existing system.
			Linux is highly customisable due to source code availability, so unless you&apos;re trying to conserve as many resources as possible by cutting out most unneeded features, you might as well build on top of Linux as a base, which would give your system virtualisation.
		</p>
		<p>
			As for hypervisors, I think that&apos;s the wrong type of virtual machine.
			Hypervisors do provide an entire computing system that needs its own operating system, yes.
			However, the topic of the reading material was virtualisation in the main operating system of the computer.
			The operating system sets up and manages virtual machines for each application to run on.
			Much less overhead is needed for this type of virtualisation, especially as a second operating system instance isn&apos;t needed.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			The old days of computing must&apos;ve been such a hassle.
			People put up with it though because that&apos;s all they had.
			They probably thought their computers were amazing, despite their limitations!
			Now we have virtualisation, and system resources can be used much more efficiently.
			Tasks can even be automated, as we don&apos;t need someone telling the computer to run the task at the time it needs to be run; it can be told well in advance to watch the clock and run the program at the appropriate time.
			I wonder what new advancements will come that will make our current systems look inconvenient and limited in comparison.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			I was going to discuss paging as well, but I totally forgot.
			Thanks for bringing it up!
			I think paging is another area where virtualisation works out very well.
			The applications don&apos;t even need to know their own $a[RAM] data is being written to disk instead of remaining in $a[RAM], because that detail is abstracted away.
			This leads to an even greater ability of applications to play nicely together on the same machine.
			None of these applications needs to know when to move their $a[RAM] data to disk and when they can move it back to $a[RAM].
			The operating system just takes care of all of that for them!
			The applications don&apos;t even need to worry about the changing $a[RAM] addresses caused by this, as the addresses remain unchanged on their own virtual $a[RAM] instances.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="docmod">
	<h2>Document modifications</h2>
	<p>
		On <a href="/en/weblog/2017/11-November/02.xhtml">2017-11-02</a>, this journal page was modified in order to redact the name of the university.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
